Is religion a curse or blessing in our modern day society?

I'm not sure if that's a yes or no question (i dont see many yes or no questions in anything personally, life is analogue, not digital, as quantum mechanics should point out since it goes by approximation and probability, not by exact numbers, a bit sad for people who need to classify everything in square spreadsheet boxes and strict set numbers but mwell...)

maybe you refer to Karl Marx

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people

or other heavies like Friedrich Nietschze

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough - I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race.

or the hipocrisy that often comes with it as Einstein so well described

"If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?" - Albert Einstein, "Out Of My Later Years"

practical views like the great French general Bonaparte

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

I could turn this into a 20page quotefest but that wouldnt include my personal answer ofcourse.

First of all i would like to discern. What is religion when people talk about it?

In this case i can only assume the question relates to the current day struggle between the three main monotheist factions : christianity, judaism and islam

When i was studying socio-cultural work in another life i had this teacher, a moroccan woman who studied something called comparative religion at university, she taught cultural history and taught me a lot, including something i (and i assume many people) didnt know

those three all have the same roots .. something most present day believers probably don't want to admit, especially the fanatics, but historically it's all true AND proven.

The fact that it's called Abrahamic and stems basically from proto-judaism probably goes down even worse, especially with fanatic christians and i wouldn't even want to mention that within two kilometres of a jihadi :)

Alas, as she was a muslim herself and the university degree was very real (they didnt really accept 'in the box' teachers there much , everyone was a bit of a weirdow (which, according to Dali should be called ab-normal)
Basically they stem from one tribe where factions arose disputing what "the one true god was"
Quite some time before jesus or muhammad, so if you look at it like that the fight has been going on for the biggest part of modern history (say that's the past 2000 to 4000 years :)

One would like to say no more slaughter has been caused throughout history than in the name of the three "one true" gods , despite that, in all their omnipotence none of them has decided to interfere, which makes any god look like either absent or sadistic at times.

But think further, the sumerians, +/- 4000BC , almost at the start of whats seen as written history had their fair share of human sacrifice , so did the aztecs and those who came before them. The egyptians didnt care much for it , islam is officially opposed to it although the interpretation of "by the sword" seems to be taken a bit literally by some these days, there's examples of human sacrifice in the christian bible.

Religious bloodshed is nothing new . The vikings , so popular in the past years on television and the screen, probably one of the most fatalistic filosophies ever, sacrificed and probably considered it an honour. As they were raised to not fear death most probably wouldnt even flinch at the thought. (vikings had a strong sense of pre-destination so it didnt really matter since if it happened it was the will of the gods anyway)

Creating gods in your image, a lot of gods depict local culture, for instance the greek and roman pantheon , which are basically a copy of each other, had a grand family of tricksters, jokers, spiteful vengeful psychopaths, adulterers and in general all-powerful beings who loved to play with their subjects.

As "the barbarians" finally succeeded in taking down the decadent empire, the core of it, the emperors and nobility actually adapted and adopted christianity and til today still have vast influence across the world, from their own state, the vatican .. which does not pay taxes, but even til today receives money from everywhere (including the united states if i'm not mistaken)

sec .... nope, i am not mistaken

That's right, your pope there is actually the last emperor of rome, from saint augustine til now, still the roman empire spreads its wings across the planet

Hindus have a very complex pantheon, about a million gods, seen as polytheism but in fact, every single god is an "aspect" of the one

probably the same as the one buddhism refers to. Where buddhism wouldn't be exactly a relgion but more like a filosophy although the buddha (which literally means the enlightened one) is in some parts considered to be "the one"(god) and allmighty
(hinduism actually contains thousands of years old explanations that could very well relate to modern day cosmology with Ka-li at the center of the universe both creating and destroying like the biggest blazar or quasar at the heart of the galaxy would be, and much much more ... there's also quite some similarity between the hindu Yugas and the mayan 'prophecies' but lets not go into that right here)

A strange thing about buddhism imo is the concept of enlightenment and reaching it, its been coloured ofcourse , much through the sixties as religion of love, but those stoners saw everything as a religion of love , that goes without saying.
In fact to achieve enlightenment, pardon my french, is to give up the giving of all f*cks. If you care you can't achieve nirvana, for good or bad, if there is anything here to draw you back, you can not stay in the state of nirvana (not geopolitically defined ofcourse) it is in fact abondoning all links with the world so that's a bit of a contradiction there, also "in order to gain anything you must lose everything" is spoken from the perspective of a spoiled prince who HAD everything and gave it up after finding out, despite his fathers attempts at sheltering him that people suffer, get diseased , and die (thats almost the very root from which Siddharta set off on his journey, look it up if you like)

All kinds of religion, there's Taoism , which is quite the complex bit, mostly in China . You have shinto in japan, more or less rooted in nature worship, attributing souls to about everything, trees, rocks, mount fuji is "fuji-san" which is a polite suffix you add to a PERSONs name.

rastafari , which is also based on abrahamic principles, but also believing their great emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari) was of divine nature...

and more

There's more than i'm willing to go into and lets ofcourse not forget the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster which started as a joke, like Dogecoin but is actually officially and legally recognized in some places.

Most of these religions dont make much world news because most religions dont actually cause worldwide wars and bloodshed ... you could say there's an exception with buddhism , mostly in Myanmar , mostly led by the eccentric figure of Ashin Wirathu ... since its an opposition to the rise of forced islam, it remains debatable ofcourse, but the buddha himself clearly forbids any act of violence (thats why you have the swords of the buddha ... the man was always picking fights but never finishing them wink )

SO

after the small intro to provide a bit of a relativistic setting as to what relgion might be ...

maybe a few lines of my own opinion ?

Personally (and i say that a lot) i dont believe in gods who care , i always claim to be polytheist agnostic by which i mean that neither believe nor deny the existence of one or more '"supreme beings" simply because i don't know. I don't believe without meeting one, but i won't discard it because i havent seen one. It's very well possible that the whole universe from the big bang is just a physical reaction but until proven otherwise, it's also possible "the ancients" (lets call it that) came from their dimension and did an experiment, banged something big and let the system ride for some billions of years, until all matter is sucked up back into black holse, growing ever more massive and supermassive, after which they can come back and unzip their cosmic zipfiles ... barring hawking radiation, no information gets lost so a black hole could be seen as gathering information but the fenomenon of blazars as recently quite well expained by @lemouth (and other -zars ... plenty of them) makes them look more like a recycling factory, gobbling up everything and then spitting out what it cant digest ... like that mental disease people get when they start over-eating and then purge it all out.

i do not know the truth it can be either this or that or anything between. I feel an atheist is dogmatic just like a believer simply by rejecting without proof, while a believer accepts without proof, pretty much the same to me :)

The present day looks like major religious turmoil and most people would point at islam, while islam in fact is in itself divided into factions who would bite each others head of and a lot of the time fanatic christians who would shotgun abortion doctors are left out.
Consider the spanish inquisition in the dark ages, there's not much difference, you could say islam is barely 900 years old (if at all, im not the numbers guy) while christianity is 2000 so its a process of evolution. Which again brings to mind the respectable ago of hinduism (you dont hear much about hindus invading countries to lop off heads these days) and buddhism after that. If age is a pointer and its an evolution then that might mean something.

Thing is, even with the current war, its only a small fraction of muslims who make all the noise, most are simply terrified by their own brethren (and sisters) and dont speak up and i think thats the big problem. With all the kneejerk reactions on simply mentioning the name of the prophet, the best and maybe only way to stop it would be for muslims themselves to reject fanaticism and open up to a more polytheist point of view (it wasnt always like this) where god is a concept that can take many forms (as in hinduism in fact), not just one symbol for male dictatorship (like the christian god in the feudal era was very convenient as a male father figure, "obey THE LORD" , literally ...)

I also think its churches that are the problem, im totally down with the dalai lama on that, relgion needs no temples since it lives in the heart and the soul. There might be need for "wise men" (priests/monks) to lend aid in moral guidance but everything else is worldly, churches are worldly, the vatican .. well can there be anything more worldly ?
As for the jihad (translates as the end of days) , not every imam preaches jihad, there's plenty who oppose it , but ofcourse those people are just as much under attack as someone who would deny the fact that Allah is the one true god (as was the dispute originally thousands of years ago)

Religion is personal and a choice, the moment it gets forced it is because HUMANS want to use it to get power , you can pray to whatever god you like whenever and wherever you like. If you consider it omnipotent there's no need to do it in a church, there's no need to give your wage to some preaching fanatic either and there's certainly no need to push it on someone else, after all

god is allmighty right ? why would he need your help?

Some people need it, some don't . If you need it you need it, if it gives you support, good, if you feel the need to force someone else to find support in it

BAD

hmmm

2:30 am ... i want to do something on my votersworthonpost script still tonight so i think i'll leave it here, should be good for another 50 cents today then

do you like fish ?

-- i like fish ...

(someone needs to meme that, that was awfully funny seeing the price there)

me : https://steemit.com/introduction/@rudyardcatling/rudyardcatling-signature-post-20180719

thanks, i hope you found something interesting in it :))

owh , last [EDIT] ... allow me one more quote from one of my all-time favourite books i didnt get to mention in the last question :

*“Faith in faith' he answered himself.
'It isn't necessary to have something to believe in.
It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief.”
Gully Foyle (Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination)